Posted on 07/18/2004 9:37:46 PM PDT by neverdem
The latte grande at the Starbucks in Tysons Corner, Va., must have seemed extra steamy last month when two college students bellied up to the bar packing pistols on their hips, as casually as if they wore cellphones. Someone called the police, who confiscated the handguns and charged the students. But wait: the Catch-22 in Virginia's enfeebled gun control laws has kicked in.
Sure there's a state law against carrying loaded firearms in public. But the lethal fine print defines "firearm" as a 20-round-plus assault rifle. So smaller weapons, like the .22-caliber and 9-millimeter pistols the students flaunted in their holsters, are legal and no permit is required. The pistols were returned, thereby contributing to a celebratory mood among the state's gun enthusiasts. Now they're strutting their Second Amendment stuff among Main Street shoppers and restaurant diners in Washington's booming Virginia suburbs.
There was what seemed a self-fantasized posse of six this month at a table in a Champps restaurant, their weapons prominent as pepper mills. The same false alarm ensued, with a police patrol backing off in the face of citizens' exercising their rights, according to The Washington Post. And how about the couple walking their dogs on busy Market Street in Reston? They carried pistols on their hips, plus extra ammunition clips, as if the area were a set from "The Wild Bunch" and not one of the most crime-free places in Virginia.
The flaunting ritual is a tribute to "open carry" gun laws on the books in a score of states. Outcries from the unarmed public usually go unheeded. In Utah, university administrators worried over students' wearing guns in dormitories were overruled by the legislature, which defended gun rights even to the point of packing in class.
You'd think Virginia citizens concerned about weapons in public would be able to seek comfort in the primacy of local controls. Alexandria, for instance, has barred open carrying. But that was before the very latest Catch-22 in Virginia law: effective this month, state law bars any locality from enacting gun regulations. Gotcha.
As long as they don't get assault rifles. Bears are notoriously poor shots at long range.
Not to mention the beautiful Chilenas.
I think of her and the CLINTON FAMILY as a Hydra. Sharpen your knife and keep on cutting; we will prevail.
I once read that citizens who carry legally, are less likely to use a firearm illegally than LEO are.
What would be Harry Callahan's thought!
Er, uh, I trust you meant that the Queen of Hearts boasted about her being able to believe a dozen IMpossible things before breakfast. Right? (w!)
Sure thing..........welcome to Virginia :)
We were camping up in the Arizona Rim country last week. I was openly carrying a holstered automatic pistol when armed U.S. Forest Service enforcement officers drove up to our campsite.
No surprise, nor so much as a question concerning the handgun, they just wanted to inform us of the fire danger and give an update on the forest fire a few miles away. All was friendly and of no consequence.
I can only shudder to think what would have happened under similar conditions in some of the more (sarcasm on) enlightened commie liberal states of NJ, NY, MA & such.
When one's government is in fear of it's free citizens being armed, those same citizens should be very much in fear of that same government.
"Wyoming. Don't come here :)"
I know to get elected, the democrat gov there in Wyoming had to promise every citizen he would personally give them each a .44 mag. (:>)
If you want to work for one of the "beltway bandits", come to Huntsville, AL
Barn Owl
I was going through this same quandary at the beginning of last year. I made a few road trips which helped.
Then I came across Find Your Spot. After taking their free test they recommended several places based on how I answered the questions. One of the places I had never heard of before: Aiken, SC. I have now - I live here and am very content. And it meets all of your criteria.
This is great! I go to (a very expensive private) school in a pretty lousy area, where you can't take a walk at night without being accosted by a mentally ill person or threatened by someone probably high on something. Cars were stolen from our parking lot repeatedly, and our house was broken into at least once. I definitely learned situational awareness, though my calculus is rusty to the point of uselessness. If I and my friends, mostly pro-gun conservatives, libertarians, and liberals, were allowed to properly arm ourselves, the environment would be much nicer.
Dear NYT:
It's actually much better that: our new law not only prevents localities from enacting new anti-gun regulations, it also removed all of the existing "granfathered" local regulations from the books. Two birds with one stone.
And it put localities into line by requiring that a temporary concealed carry permit be issued on the spot should that locality exceed its 45-day statutory issuance deadline. No more footdragging.
And 14 other new pro-firearms laws.
Gotcha.
But no RKBA. Unless things have changed a heck of a lot.
If you got a "porta armas" it was for one gun and a bullet and shell casing from it was kept in the national armory.
I lived for a couple years up in mid-New Hampshire, it was very nice. Once you get past the lower part of NH (which is packed with Mass tax evaders and illegal aliens) it lives up to the Live Free Or Die motto, although people don't run around flouting the law or abusing freeedom. An interesting aspect is that one friend went for his concealed carry at the local (town) PD and had it the next day.
Also drove around Alaska for a month with a vague notion of perhaps moving there. Its another superb state which I came to call the United State Of Alaska. It's a world unto itself.
Interesting point and very pertinent to this NYT editorial: one of the firearms laws stricken by the VA legislature was that "high density" localities could require a firearms permit. I don't know if any of our "high density" localities (which would be most of Northern VA) actually had such a requirement, but they can't anymore.
That's why I camp only in National Forests and avoid National Parks whenever possible (where firearms are not allowed).
The NF's also offer less crowding and usually a more pristine setting than the NP's.
give them time...
This NYT editorial is even more whiny and moany than the Wash Post story yesterday (or was it Saturday?).
And you're right, it's a hoot.
What makes it even more satisfying is that the NYT can't gin-up any "corrective" actions or editorial drumbeating, since they'd get a hearing only in Alexandria, Arlington, and perhaps Reston (oh, and maybe Falls Church City which lost it's grandfathered ban on open carry).
So the NYT is reduced to impotent carping, and that's as far it'll get.
The NYT (as to be expected) not once mentioned that Starbucks can put a "No Firearms Permitted" sign on its doors if it so chooses, and that any proprietor of any establishment can ask an open carry patron to leave (or just remove the firearm from the premises). The penalty for refusal to comply is misdemeanor trespassing.
And it probably stays crime-free within their immediate vicinity.
The NYT are a bunch of sissy-girl gunophobes.
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